Paint A Portrait Of My Mystery

Twelve years ago my family moved into the house my parents currently live in. Every room, from the pink kitchen to the bright blue bedrooms, needed to be painted. The living room was one of my mother's most hated rooms. It was painted a greenish/blueish colour, somewhere between a turquoise and a teal. It was as though the previous owner was trying to match the walls of the living room to the colour of his early 90's sedan.

Even though the colour of the living room was so hated, the difficulty of the painting (it has a high vaulted ceiling) combined with the difficulty in choosing a colour (my mother is the most indecisive person on the planet) meant that the room never got the makeover it needed. Which was sad because all of the family gatherings / birthdays / Christmas celebrations, etc take place in the living room, meaning all of our family photos have a teal background.

Turtle and I decided that as a surprise for my parents, we would paint the living room. We agonized over the colour choice (finally deciding on yellow after deliberating on every conceivable colour from the perspective of my mother, which by the way, was a ridiculous process. Sample conversation - Hillary: what about green? Turtle: Mom thinks green is a bad luck colour. Hillary: what the what?) So we made our colour choice and made our painting schedule based on us getting home from the Okanagan on Monday night and my parents staying until Saturday night.

And then my mom left me at the airport and I had all kinds of stabby feelings toward her.

Turtle talked me into continuing with our plan by saying that it would feel good to be the bigger person, yada yada yada. The real reason was that she had spoken to my dad about our secret plan and she didn't want me to look like a petulant bastard (even though I totally am a petulant bastard.) I mention this not to point out that Turtle is a liar who lies (I kid, I kid - Turtle is pretty much the only family member I like right now) but to mention that my dad knew we would be painting. Keep that in mind.

So all week, while I was seething at my mother, I was also painting her stupid living room. Did I mention that Shawn's dad is in town and I could have been spending time with him, going out for nice dinners and going on a road trip to Whistler? Did I mention that work has been particularly horrific for the last two weeks because I start a new position tomorrow (eep!) with a lot more responsibility and I need to actually know stuff? Painting my mother's living room is the last thing I wanted to do, is what I'm saying. But I did it. Turtle and her boyfriend and I spent hours on Wednesday and Thursday after work and managed to get the first coat finished.

It looked horrible.

... to be continued when I am feeling less ranty ...